GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, architect of the Republican revolution of 1994, said he learned a lot about politics from a surprising source: Liberal Democratic California Gov. Jerry Brown.

”Brown is about as clever as anybody in American politics,” Gingrich told The Chronicle Saturday at the California Republican Party convention in Burlingame. “Has been his whole life. And I think he learned a lot.”

The two shared dinner often when Brown was mayor of Oakland, a job which Gingrich called “one of the great educational experiences of all time.”

Gingrich said he didn’t know enough about California politics to say how Brown was doing as governor. (A Field poll released Saturday showed that Brown was viewed positively by more Californians than not.)

Still, Gingrich said Sacramento is “a mess.” But “he’s not Sacramento.”

“It strikes me that the core problem is that you have this interlocking system of bureaucracies, interest groups and unions and the Legislature and the governor float on top of it,” Gingrich said. “Until you get a level of anger sufficient enough to break through the machine, even a person as clever as Brown will govern within the framework the machine tolerates. Because you can’t get beyond it.”

Gingrich said that years of watching how this dynamic began to dominate Sacramento politics — in the years under former Assembly speakers Willie Brown and Jesse Unruh — radicalized him about national politics.

“This is part of why I became more radical about Washington,” Gingrich said. “Because I watched Sacramento and Albany and I thought I was seeing the future.”